Citrus and other types of fruit have traditionally been harvested manually. This type of work is quite labor intensive and therefore costly. Moreover, persons picking fruit and other varieties of tree grown produce by hand have been required to use unwieldy ladders to reach the higher levels of the tree. This has created a serious risk of falls and resulting injuries. As a result, worker's compensation costs in the fruit harvesting industry have increased dramatically. Manual harvesting also presents various problems associated with a transient and poorly educated work force. Recently, immigration and security issues have made the citrus industry's almost exclusive reliance upon such workers increasingly undesirable.
Various mechanized solutions have been proposed for the harvesting industry. For example, an assortment of shakers and canopy penetrators have been utilized to retrieve fruit mechanically. Each of these known devices exhibits certain problems, however. Such machines tend to be incredibly expensive. In many cases they are not suited for the particular grove or produce being harvested, or for the particular harvesting season. Known mechanical harvesters also tend to excessively damage the tree and create considerable debris. In many cases, a significant amount of fruit is missed during the mechanical harvesting process. Due to these difficulties, manual harvesting is still the preferred means of picking fruit.
“Cherry picker” machines have recently been used to improve manual harvesting. Typically, a single individual is raised and lowered in a bucket supported at the end of a mechanically operated boom or lift arm. The collected fruit is either dropped to the ground for later collection or deposited in a container carried on the bucket. Neither technique is optimally efficient. In the former case, additional workers must accompany the machine to collect fruit that is dropped on the ground. Once again, this technique is labor intensive, inefficient and costly. In addition, fruit can be damaged when it is dropped a considerable height to the ground. Depositing the picked fruit into a bin or container carried by the bucket is also quite inefficient. Each time the bin or basket is filled, the boom or lift arm must be lowered so that the fruit can be emptied into a larger container or hopper. In order to completely harvest the tree, the boom must be gradually raised and lowered so that the worker can collect produce from each level of the tree. The harvesting process is therefore quite time consuming, particularly when the machine must be maneuvered through many rows of fruit or other produce bearing trees in order to complete the harvesting process.
A number of harvesting machines are known, which use multiple booms or lift arms for allowing respective workers to pick fruits at varying heights. See, for example, Girardi, U.S. Pat. No. 2,927,705, Wiegel, U.S. Pat. No. 2,821,312 and Gerber, U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,941. All of the known harvesting machines exhibit various limitations that adversely effect their efficiency and productivity. In each case, a worker must carefully place the fruit in a funnel or other receptacle located at the upper end of a conduit. Citrus workers normally try to pick the fruit as quickly as possible. This can result in some fruit being mishandled, accidentally dropped to the ground and damaged. In addition, most known harvesting machines deliver the fruit to a receptacle which must be periodically emptied. This can cause inefficient delays in the harvesting process.
Conventional citrus harvesters also tend to experience problems maneuvering within constricted groves, as well as between oddly or unevenly spaced rows of trees. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to laterally maneuver the machine in order to provide the workers with ready access to the trees on both sides of a row. Irrigation ditches and/or rough terrain can further complicate maneuverability of the machine and may interfere with the machine's ability to position the buckets and workers at a level position so that productive harvesting may be completed.